Moon shadow, moon shadow

If you live in Southern England and are still up, do yourself a favour. Put on your coat and some sturdy shoes and head outside. Right now. In the middle of the night. You will never again see such a beautiful thing.

The night is perfectly still. Perfectly calm. Perfectly quiet. The sky is clear with stars shining as though trying to out do each other. The moon is full, round, heavy and magnificent. The ground is shrouded in white snow. The moonlight picks up the ice crystals making them sparkle like diamonds. The light is surreal, a strange twilight, magical, enchanting.

I stared out of the window for a long time wondering what it was that made everything look so utterly different. And then I saw it. On the ground was the stark, black, perfect shadow of our bare walnut tree. Its branches looked spookily beautiful, like a traced drawing in charcoal. In all of my 35 years I have never seen a moon shadow. Certainly nothing like this. Because normally the moon shines its light and the shadow is cast on dark ground. But now it has a irridescent white canvas on which to paint its shadowy masterpieces.

It was so magnificent that I had to go outside. I stepped onto the crunchy snow, breathing little puffs of steam in the cold and stood in the middle of our garden in awe. I gazed at the moon, its shadows, the stars, the snow and the ice crystals. I breathed in deep, the cold air cuttingly pure. I was filled with the most incredible joy and utter peace.

No words can do justice to the beauty I've seen. Just go outside and see it for yourself.